EzriA
by waxonwings
Summary: "What if I was wrong and no one cared to mention?" Years later, Aria and Ezra return to Rosewood. With ulterior motives fueling their involvement with Spencer, will she finally solve the puzzle she was presented with years ago? ON HIATUS C:
1. Chapter 1

"Are you coming to get me?" I pull the snarl out of my voice as I hold the phone up to my face. The sunlight is killer, even through my sunglasses.

"Aria, I'm stuck in traffic."He says, and a horn honks as confirmation. He sighs.

I huff, then settle myself. "How long will it be?"

"Uhh… think about forty minutes. Maybe fifty." He says apologetically.

"My god. Okay, I'm walking."

"It's 95 degrees out." He scoffs.

"I don't care!" I hang up right as he cries out, "Aria, wait!" I jam the thing into my bag and stomp towards the elevator, avoiding the cracks in the concrete floor. The overhead speakers hum coffee shop music, and a myriad of insects hover around the fluorescent lights. I don't know how it's this hot at night. I start to feel bad for snapping at Ezra, but I don't think I could have stood another six seconds in that apartment.

I jam my thumb into the elevator button with a little too much vigor, and it sticks. I jam it again, and again, but the only thing I succeed in doing is turning my thumb the color of the red light illuminating the button. I stand and stare at it for a few moments, as if this will set it free, but it seems to only sink it further into the socket. I clamp my jaw down to calm myself, and whip around and head towards the staircase. I'm on the fifteenth fucking floor and I have to walk all the way down in this heat. I guess it serves me right for snapping at him.

Sweat forms on my brow as I trudge down the flights of stairs, and my high heeled shoes send shooting pains through my ankles. On the sixth floor, right as I'm bending over to take them off, I hear a door latch pop, and a gust of cool air hits me as someone exits their apartment.

"Aria?" The owner of the cool air asks. I stand up, wiping my face with my shirt sleeve. Suddenly very self-conscious, I cross my arms over my chest as I rise to meet their eyes.

"Spencer?" I say, keeping my voice just above a mutter.

"I didn't know you lived here." She says, taking off her tee shirt to reveal a tight fitting ribbed tank top.

"Same to you." I scratch the crook of my elbow.

"How long have you lived here?" She asks

"About twelve hours." I nod to confirm my mental tally.

"That's not really fair then. I doubt the phonebook knows you live here." She smiles, readjusting her bag on her shoulder. Good. She's nervous.

"If you don't mind my asking, what are you doing here?" I ask as I use the chipping paint on the wall just to the left of her head as a focal point.

"Umm…" She pauses. "I live here?"

"I got that. Uh, why do you live here?" She doesn't answer right away. There's no way she wants to discuss the circumstances that landed her in this shitty building.

"I'm going to Hollis." She says. "And I'm on my own."

"Me, too, actually." I say.

"Wow, um, okay." She nods. "Where are you going?"

"Hollis." She scorns at my stupid answer, trying to dissect it. I laugh. "To meet my boyfriend."

"Okay." She says, and starts walking down the stairs. I start to follow her, but suddenly, it occurs to me that I could have taken the elevator from any of these floors I passed, and I head back up to the seventh floor, since there are only elevators on odd numbered floors.

This time, when I jam the elevator button, it complies and the doors creak open. It's air conditioned inside, and I sink into the wall beneath the vent. My phone buzzes, and I pull it out of my bag. Ezra texted: _Cleared up. Be there in five. _I sigh. Finally.

As I sit on the bench out front, I watch Spencer emerge from the staircase and walk to her car, beads of sweat glistening on her bare skin beneath the parking lot lights. She sits in the cab for a few minutes before she drives off, but I can't seem to tell what it is she's doing.

When Ezra pulls up, he has to roll down his window and call at me before I see him.

"Sorry. I was spaced out." I climb into the cab, and the cold nearly gives me a whiplash. I had adjusted to the heat in the short time.

He yanks the gear and we head out of the parking lot, hitting almost every pothole on the lot. "Do you want to go to a birthday dinner The Grille?"

"That sounds perfect. I'm starved." I smile, leaning over the console to rub his arm.

"Happy 20th." He says. "I think I'll let you pick the music, just this once." He teases.

"You're going to regret that." I respond, smiling as I plug my phone into the jack.

"Sorry I bitched at you earlier." I say, scrolling through my music list.

He chuckles. "I don't blame you, really."

"What are you going to order?" I've already chosen the song, but he's staring at the road and I want something to look at, too, so I keep swiping at my phone screen.

"I saw Spencer." I say, watching him to gauge his response.

He perks up at this. "So we got the right building?"

I nod to confirm, "Yeah, we did."

"And you're taking her to coffee to catch up, right?"

"Do you think that's a good idea?"

"I think it's a great idea. Completely suspicionless. You'll do great." He leans over and kisses the side of my face.

The smell of his car conquers my nose, but I still catch hints of my sweat.

"Do I stink?"

He sniffs like a rabbit, his nose crinkled. "No, I don't smell anything."

"I had to walk down nine flights of stairs. Up one. Like you said, it is hot out."

"What happened to the elevator?" He asks.

"I happened."

He laughs, and the sound eases me. "Did you jam the button again?"

"That was one time! Two now, but you can't talk about it like it happens all the time." I shove him.

"How was the rest of your day?" He says, still laughing.

"Excruciatingly boring. That apartment is suffocating." I dramatically bug my eyes out.

"Well, good thing you've got somewhere else to stay tonight."

I slam my hands onto my thighs. "Oh, thank _god!_"

"It hasn't been that long!" He exclaims as he turns in to the parking lot.

"Please. I thought I was going to shrivel up and die."

"Fine. Whatever you say, it's your night." I lean over and kiss his cheek.

"Damn straight it is."

"Damn straight." He confirms, pulling into a vacant spot and hopping out to open my door for me.

"Such a gentleman." I tousle his hair as I climb out. He shoots me his boyish grin and curtsies as I pass him. I'm so glad that for tonight I have nowhere to be and no reason to be there, because time and my busy schedule have robbed me of so many nice nights with him and I need this one.


	2. Chapter 2

**Spencer**

I drive around for a few minutes trying to process what just happened before I realize that I'm acting like an idiot. I tuck my hair behind my ear and pull a U-turn, heading back to the library. Rain starts to streak the windshield, and I pull my hair up behind my head, scanning for something to tie it with, and I try to drive with my knees as I yank my hair into a sloppy bun at the nape of my neck and pull a beanie on. The town always gets brighter when it rains, ironically. You can hide better, it eats up the darkness. The college campus is dreary, and I hope that it will still be gray when I leave.

Part of me keeps heading back to Aria no matter how many times I try to chain it back. It's relentless, and I'm still tired from last night's sleeplessness. I'm hungry, too, since I haven't gone for groceries since Monday and it's about to be Monday again. I refuse to accept money from my parents, so my part time job waiting tables is left to its own insufficiency. I'm like a cactus. I eat infrequently, but when I do, I gorge myself as a method of rationing. It isn't healthy, but it works.

I am not used to living on my own, that much is true. Maybe it would have been better if I'd moved in with Hanna and Emily, but they were up north attending some school I was now too poor for. So I am stuck listening to the rise and fall of my own chest at night, which usually proves too torturous to not be blanketed by my TV, which eliminates sleep as a possibility.

So yeah. I'm lonely. But in all honesty I'm doing pretty well. I'm getting a degree in Business Finance, which I could definitely hate less, but I am happy. I really am. The rainwater sloshes at my tires as I pull into the parking lot, and fills my shoes despite my care in stepping on the driest patch of ground available. Not even dry. Just less wet. I run to the building, water flying up at every angle and try not to look at all the students walking in their little groups, too wrapped up to notice me. I hate it here. I might drop out if I hadn't already invested so much. I'm nineteen, but a freshman, since I spent last year working every shift I could trying to earn as much money as I could for tuition. I scraped together three thousand with my minimal eating strategy, and enrolled this last spring for the fall semester. Now I'm keeping busy watching it all drain out of my account as I slurp ramen noodles.

The doors aren't locked, but they stick long enough for me to think they are, and I finally just jam my shoulder into them, and they swing open and I smell library as the first breath of air fills my lungs. Everyone is staring. I have pierced the silence with my entrance. I start a staring contest with the floor as I pace to an empty seat, pulling my laptop out of my bag and setting it on the armrest.

The entire place is silent. I stare out the window for so long that when I finally look away, all I can see for a minute is the negatives of the image still imprinted on my mind. I trace the grains of wood in the table with my fingernails as I release my mind from the leash I'd chained it to. Maybe I should just go home, it isn't like I haven't already read all the good books here. The selection is so limited, and I've already narrowed it down to Alton Brown's cookbook and a bunch of romance novels written for mothers in their forties. I need a hobby. I scroll through the contacts list in my phone. Is it possible to have seventy contacts in your phone and no one to call? Maybe if they're all old acquaintances from high school, but it still strengthens my sense of social ineptitude. Maybe I really am all alone in this school. I think it's my fault for not talking to anyone here, not like there aren't any people.

"Spencer?"

I whip around, my hair falling into my face. "Noel?"

He pulls out a chair and sits down with a certain air of entitlement. I don't think he means to be rude, but it gets on my nerves. "I didn't know you went here."

"Yeah, I just started a week ago." I say, pretending to be emailing someone.

"You're a freshman?"

"Mmhmm." I say, sending myself an email so my phone will make a noise.

He chuckles. "That's too bad. I'm throwing a party this weekend, no freshmen allowed."

"I'm devastated." I say, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear and trying not to lean too far away.

He laughs and stands up. "Am I gonna see you there?"

I scoff. "Bye, Noel." He runs his fingers through his hair and paces off. God. Now I remember why I hate these people. I screw in my earbuds and fall back into a something-sleep leaning against the seat back with misplaced trust, I've seen more than a few people fall backwards out of these. I'm there for an interminable period, before the lights flip out and I am unceremoniously ejected from the premises, back into the rain.

I hope she's having a better night than I am.

Back to my car, back to the cold apartment. I watch the lights around me spin like a color palette as I pull onto the highway. I don't know what to do when I get home, so I settle on channel surfing the shows I pick up with the bunny ears I bought before I sink far enough into the couch to actually fall asleep.

It's my internal alarm clock that wakes me up again in the morning, and though the sun has not yet risen I can't seem to return to sleep. That's always been what happens to me, I guess it's what I get for letting myself go to sleep so early. I brew myself a pot of coffee and sip it as I watch the birds flocking outside as the rest of the world wakes up. I don't feel like showering, but I pull my hair up and slide into last night's still clean jeans. Shoving my keys into my pocket, I head out the door. I can endure being alone in front of all these people as long as I don't spend the entire day in total isolation.

Heading out the door and facing the blinding sunlight and chilling cold almost gives me a whiplash, and I'm sporting a sun grin when I duck into the fifth floor elevator after descending the staircase.

"Spencer?"

Nuh uh. Not twice in a row. "Morning." I say, relaxing the muscles that make me grimace, and turn to face her head on.

"Good morning." She smiled. Her hair was perfectly curled down to the strand, and her makeup was immaculate. "Where are you going?"

_Nowhere._ "The Brew, probably."

"Oh, me, too. Are you meeting anyone there?" She leans against the back wall of the elevator.

I can't lie to her now, she's going to be there. "No. I like reading there."

"Me, neither. Do you want to read together? We could catch up, if you want." She erects herself and walks out of the elevator. I almost forget to follow her.

"It's hard to catch up while you read." I point out. I know, nice. Pointing out people's flaws is always perceived as friendly.

"Then we won't read." She offers, shrugging as she digs her keys out of her bag. "We can just talk." She meets my eyes and awaits confirmation. I don't really know what to do besides say yes, so that's what I do. She smiles and beckons for me to follow her into her car, which in itself indicates that she's not as poor as she led on. It's the same one she had in high school, which she might have sold if she really needed to. I sold my car the day I moved out for a solid 30k, and bought a small economy car from the mid-nineties.

"This sounds like small talk, but how have you been?" She asks as she lights the ignition and pulls out of her parking spot.

I hit the high points as I recap the last two years of my life, and she, as usual, can tell exactly what it is I don't want to talk about. I thank my lucky stars she avoids asking about them.

"What are you studying at Hollis?" She asks as she pulls a smooth left turn. She's a very good driver, maybe even better than me. Her hands slide across the steering wheel as she eyes the road. I bite the insides of my cheeks to keep the smile off my face.

"Business finance." I say, fiddling with my keys in my lap.

She peels her eyes off the road to face me. "Really? I pegged you for more of a math and science-y type."

"Finance is math." I say. There I go, correcting her again.

"I guess, but I thought more of a science-y math." She says, still smiling at me.

"I guess I did, too."

"Well, do you like it?"

I pause, readying a response that's fully honest but not thorough, "I don't hate it."

She laughs, partially just to fill the silence, which conquers once she stops. I scramble for words, but none come up other than: "You?"

"Philosophy." I scoff internally. Does she really think she can make any money off of a philosophy degree? I decide not to relay these thoughts to her. "Do you like that?"

"I did last year. Now I think it's really stupid. Math classes are black and white, right?" She looks at me for confirmation. I nod. "That's good, there's right and wrong. Then there are classes like social studies, which are black and white with some gray area in the middle. But philosophy, philosophy is all gray. You stare at it long enough and it all turns to the same color of gray. It's impossible." She shakes her head to emphasize her frustration.

"I guess I can understand that." I curl my toes under inside my shoes. "Says the Finance girl."

"No, it can extend to more than just academia." She affirms. "Gray area shows up everywhere. It eats up all the black and white, all the pure good and the pure evil until the entire world is one stinking pile of indistinguishable ambiguity."

"Careful, your philosophy is showing." I tease, and she huffs in frustration.

"I know. It's eating my brain." She shakes her head like the thoughts are little goblins clinging to her hair and she can shake them off. "Are you happy?" She asks.

"Yes." I blurt out with such speed and rigor that it must seem disconcerting to her. I want to go back and change my answer, but I can't scrape the words back into my mouth.

"I'm really glad you're happy." She says, and she looks like now that she's cleared that up she can finally rest peacefully at night. "I really am."

"Me, too." All of my words worth saying seem to be hiding from me. It's like trying to catch a tiny fish in a giant tank full of rocks and plants and other tiny fish. They slip out of the net before you can lift it above water. "Are you happy?"

"I think so." It's just as concise as my answer, but much more honest. She glances over at me as she pulls into the parking lot.

"That's good." I affirm, cursing myself internally for my social downfalls. But then again, it doesn't really matter what she thinks of me. Does it?

I struggle to keep the conversation going as we exit the car and are met by a bustling crowd. Even in such a small town, the only good coffee shop attracts people like moths to a light, especially on a Monday morning.

Yep, it's Monday. I need to go buy groceries, but I have a feeling I'll be utilizing my skills of procrastination for at least a few more hours, and besides, I need to pick up money.

Shit. Money. I slam my hands into my pockets, terrified I won't have any money to pay with. I encounter a total of two dollars and forty two cents, with a notable amount of junk fished out as well. Thank god. Only once my concern for this has faded do I experience a rush of embarrassment over the fact that she most likely just saw me spazzing over the change in my pants pockets. She doesn't, though, she's been looking ahead the whole time. Or so I tell myself.

She orders her usual, which is apparently a soy cappuccino. I order a drip and dump in three sugar packets, sipping slowly and sliding the leftover change back into my pockets.

"You still drink the same coffee." She says, nodding at my cup.

"Yeah, coffee is the nectar of the gods."

She laughs at that. "Yeah, it is. I need to get off these cappuccinos, though, they're killing me. Four dollars a cup, and I just can't stay away." She gestures with the thing, and a bit sloshes out onto the table.

"Are they good?" I ask, then reprimand myself internally. Of course they're good. She wouldn't pay four dollars for coffee that sucks.

"Sometimes I can't tell, really. Maybe I'm just stuck on them. Tradition, you know." She says. That makes sense to me, I guess. Getting stuck on something just out of habit.

"Well, try this." I offer her my cup, and she takes a tiny sip.

She sputters, "Yeah. I'm sticking with the espresso drinks." She takes a sip out of hers and releases an 'ahhh'. "I'm sorry. To each their own."

I laugh, and stare at the outline of her lipstick on the rim of my lid. When she's not looking, I wipe it off with my sleeve. "So, where have you been for the last two years?"

She glances across the room and says, "Ezra and I went up to Philly." As she smudges the lipstick on her own lid, the ring on her fingers shifting beneath their own weight. One snake, one pair of lips, and one warped and twisted pig that looks like it's been melting down her hand like candle wax. She catches me staring at them, and moves her idle fingers on the other hand to fiddling with them. "He bought me these," She mutters, "Do you like them?"

I nod. She lifts her eyes to meet mine, and grins at me in a way that feels secret. I find myself leaning away slightly, and I remember Alison's words, five years ago: _The bolder the move, the less anyone questions it._ I stop myself from shying away when she pulls the biggest one, the set of lips, off of her finger and slides it onto mine. I almost expect the metal to be cold, but it isn't. It fits onto my finger perfectly.

"It's nice." I say, lifting my hand from the table to examine it as I shift it around beneath the light. I don't slide it off until the takes my hand back into hers and wiggles it off slowly, and back onto her own hand.

"It looks better on you." I say to her, and she nods.

"He had it custom made. I'm between sizes, and besides, they didn't make them in red, which is strange."

I give her a look that's supposed to be puzzled, but probably doesn't even land within the ballpark. God, I have to change the subject. "Why did you guys come back?"

"Well, there's no place like home." She pushes the sugar into one end of a sugar packet until it bulges, her perfectly manicured nails threatening to break the paper.

"What about the others? Have you been talking to them?" She asks, popping the lid off of hers like a champagne cork and sprinkling the sugar into it.

"Not really, no. They're both going to school in Albany." I respond, draining the last of the coffee from my cup.

"You can't call them?" She criticizes.

I laugh, "Not if I don't have their numbers. Why, are you in contact with them?"

She shakes her head, "It's been a while." She reaches across the table and lands her hand on mine. An overwhelming urge to yank it back threatens to take over, but I hold it still, which might take more energy than actually pulling it back. "I'm so glad I ran into you here." Her hands are frigid, but soft.

Without my permission, my hand retreats. She smiles at this like she'd gotten into my head and made me do it. "What do you want to do after this?" She inquires.

"I don't know, what are you doing?" I ask, sounding faintly hostile. She takes this as her cue to begin rummaging through her purse, and she pulls out a ticket to an art museum exposition and fans herself with it.

Sounding unusually sure of myself, I ask, "Did you ask me that question just to brag?"

"No, I wanted to know if you wanted to join me." She scorns, and extracts another ticket from the depths of her bag.

"I can't." I am suddenly very uncomfortable in her company. I can't seem to discern why she bought an extra ticket with which to invite me, and I clutch my own bag in my lap, ready to make an escape. "This one is for Ezra. They sell them at the door, but they're twenty dollars instead of fifteen. We'd love for you to join us."

Okay, so she didn't expect me to join her from the start. But I'm still not going; I don't want to spend the next three hours being their third wheel. Besides, I need to go to the store. "I still can't. Thanks for the offer. Maybe I'll see you later?" I scoop up the mess I'd made on the table and dump it in the trashcan behind me. "I have to go. Have fun!" I smile at her as I make my escape.

She doesn't follow me, and that's the last time I see her for two weeks, no matter how often I casually peer around for her inside the apartment complex or at the coffee shop.


	3. Chapter 3

"No, we have to get back into town." He hisses into the phone, "We've been out since the sixth. We have got to get back. It's urgent."

I flop down on the hotel bed behind him, clad in the signature black hoodie. After all these years, and it's still right in the center of my comfort zone. I feel safer in black than anything else.

"I know it's late. We need a ride." He growls, low and guttural. He whips around to face me and covers the speaker on the phone. "Aria, do you have another twenty dollars? We're going to have to take a cab." I nod and he removes his hand and says to the person on the other line, "Thanks for your help." His voice dripping acid.

I lift myself from the bed and begin gathering my things into the duffel bag I'd brought, as he angrily does the same. "Thank god we're finally getting back." I say.

He sighs heavily in response. "Yeah, well, it's a miracle we figured anything out with Hardy on the other end." I walk over to him and rest my hand on his shoulder. I'm the only one who can ever placate him these days.

"Well, we're getting back, right?" I mumble the words onto his shoulder, and he turns to rest his chin on my head. "Hey," I say, pulling away, "Hardy doesn't suspect anything, does he?"

"Of course not." He turns and scorns at me.

"Okay. Just asking." Our car has chosen this night to break down, which is just my luck. We were thinking of driving back last night, but something else came up, and while we were on our ways to go and do said thing, we blew out the suspension on a massive pothole, which drove me into a fit of kicking and cursing at the car until Ezra finally picked me up and held me until I calmed down. We can't drive it anywhere tonight

3.

"Well, I'll call the cab." He nods to himself and punches in the cab company number.

I pull my laptop from beneath the bed and punch in our password, triggering the presentation of another password request, which I supply. The high security system on my - computer seems superfluous to Ezra, but I can't sleep at night unless I know that it's impossible for anyone to get in.


	4. Chapter 4

It's a Tuesday night when I next see her. She's carrying a duffel bag over her shoulder, and it's close to being bigger than her. She looks somewhat flustered, but her face is cold as stone. Part of me wants to approach her, but I chain it down and continue to peer from around the corner as she pulls a key from her pocket and dangles it between her teeth as she presses the elevator button. She's still in high heels, just like last time I saw her, but those false four inches aren't helping her to conquer the weight of what she's carrying. Suddenly, silently, a second figure emerges from the staircase. I followed her here, and now I think I'm going to have to follow her out. Her companion has a black zip up hoodie tied around his waist, and is still impressively taller than her. He swoops down and pecks her on the lips. She yanks away quickly, but reluctantly.

"Not now." She runs her hand down the length of his arm as consolation. The large black six on the wall behind her bears a gleaming reflection of the sunset light behind us both, and serves to effectively blind me whenever I try to look closely at them. She hands him the bag and he paces off to the staircase, presumably to return it to her apartment. She walks over to my door, and slides beneath it a wadded up piece of paper with some black script on it.

I let her saunter off to a safe distance before I approach and unlock my door, cautiously, as if I might set off a landmine. It seems almost unreal when the only thing waiting for me is exactly what I'd seen before: a wadded up piece of paper with black script handwriting on the back.

Black script, black hoodie. A wave of suspicion and chill run through my nerves like electricity, but I shake it off quickly and unfold the note in front of me, slowly and deliberately. The entire page is filled with scrawled cursive, spiky and dramatic, same color of black, and a myriad of scribble making the majority of it indistinguishable. It's difficult to know where it ends and where it begins, so I start at the top left corner. The closer I look, the more intimately familiar the handwriting seems, though I can't seem to tell where from. It isn't Aria's, she either writes in all caps or with a loopy cursive where each words flows into the next.

Ezra Fitz. This is the handwriting that graded my English papers during my junior year of high school, slid under my door. Was he the man in the sweatshirt who had kissed her only to be swatted off? I suppose that makes sense.

I scold myself internally for swerving off track, and pull a pen from the jar off my desk, circling all coherent words and writing them down on my notepad. I can't shake the feeling of how weird this is, but I'm determined to keep going.

When I'm done, I've gathered these words:

_Seven _

_Thursday_

_Black_

_All_

_Black_

_Behind_

_Coffee_

_See you._

I scan the rest of the page, but it's futile. This is all there is. From top to bottom, left to right, this is how it reads, this is what I'm meant to see. It's an unsettling medium for communication, reminds me of cereal box letters. I feel like I should be holding up a copy of today's newspaper. I wonder about what's going down on Thursday at seven, and why I should wear black, but the intrigue is overpowering. I feel a strange desire to go and find out, but every ounce of sense in my body is screaming at me to _not go, _but even the thought feels like a wasted clue and I know I could never bear to do so.

In desperate need of background noise in the haunting silence that has blanketed my apartment, I punch the TV power button until I find a channel capable of pacifying the commotion in my head, but no matter how much I stare at the figures on the screen, I feel like I'm looking right through them. The initial surprise has worn off, and I feel a deep sense of insecurity. Though it's irrational, I continuously catch myself stealing glances over my shoulder. I can't seem to stop it.

I consider going out the next day, but I have no real reason to, as I never have class on Wednesdays. I dump all of my energy, which has accumulated to a decent amount, into the extensive pile of homework, some of it overdue. Around noon, the roaring of my stomach overtakes my realm of attention, and I resign myself to munching on a bowl of cereal as I try once again to delve into a TV show, which has no intellectual appeal, but does inspire me to sink as far into the couch as I can and slip into a deep sleep, thanks to my total emotional and mental exhaustion.

That's before I heard the knock on my door. It fought its way into my dream at first, and I don't wake up until it's accompanied by a nagging voice calling my name. I leap off of the couch and attempt to placate my wild hair, before snagging a rubber band off of my desk and yanking it into a ponytail, rearranging my rustled shirt on my chest, and opening the door while simultaneously rubbing at my tired eyes, which are still adjusting to the light beaming in from outside.

"Morning, sunshine." Aria teases, running her fingers over a spot of hair I evidently missed. I resist the urge to yank away, which she no doubt sense. "You look great."

I can't tell if she's being sarcastic or not, and this unsettles me.

"Don't look at me like I'm a stranger. We used to be best friends, that has to count for something." She strategically avoids the cereal bowl on the coffee table as she props her feet up, waiting for me to swoop in and remove it. I pretend like I don't see.

"Do you want something to eat?" I offer, praying she'll decline.

"I ate before I got here, but thanks." I return to the couch, watching her on the chair out of the corner of my eye as I pretend to be busy rummaging through my purse.

"I'm sorry if this is weird, Spencer. I don't really know how to reinitiate a lost friendship. But I really miss hanging out with you. I'll leave if you want." She pulls her feet off the table and readies herself to leave.

"No, stay."


End file.
